I am asking you to support my campaign with a donation not because I am a Green Party member, but because I am the most active, experienced, and successful candidate on the ballot.

I am Your Independent Candidate:Accepting no for-profit interest financial donations from either individuals, PACs, or political/campaign committees. Advocating for equal party representation on our elected government bodies and non-partisan ballots.

I am Your Workers Candidate:Public Employee providing Small Business Development Assistance to Entrepreneurs; AFL/CIO/AFT/NYSUT/OCCFTA Local 1845 Steward Representative for over 100 Professional Administrators; Delegate to the Greater Syracuse Labor Council; Delegate to the National American Federation of Teachers Convention.

I am Your Community Candidate:Manage two Community Gardens on South Salina St and Gifford St providing fresh food for the neighborhoods; Member/Participant of Take Back The Streets initiative; Near Westside resident and activist (Adopt-A-Block and Adopt-A-Trashcan, Westside Walks Snow Shoveling Brigade, TNT - Tomorrow's Neighborhoods Today citywide Board Member).

I am your Leadership Candidate. I am the only candidate who publicly posted a resume for this position's appointment earlier this year - and who still believes in transparency as a first principle in politics. I am the Board President of the 24 million dollar in assets Community Development Financial Institution Cooperative Federal Credit Union. I led the strategic planning process of the new TNT after formation as an independent organization.

The Green Party handed out the statement below at the judicial candidates forum at the Southwest Community Center tonighturging voters not to vote for three judicial candidates who filed Green Party designating petitions: Democrat Frank B. Pelosi for City Court Judge, Republican Loretta R. Kilpatrick for Surrogates Court Judge, and Republican Michele Pirro Bailey for Family Court Judge

The Green Party believes that judicial candidates who have filed Green Party designating petitions after being asked not to are showing poor judgment for people who want to be judges, the statement said.

"The Green Party was created for Green candidates, not the candidates of other parties,” said Howie Hawkins, Chair of the Green Party of Onondaga County and the Green candidate for mayor of Syracuse.

The statement thanks City Court Judge candidates Vanessa Bogan and James Cecile for refraining from petitioning for the Green Party ballot line. Hawkins noted that since the statement was drafted, Mary Keib Smith for Surrogates Court Judge and Beth Lockhart for Family Court Judge have also pledged to respect the Green Party’s political independence and not seek the Green Party ballot line.

The deadline for designating petitions was July 13. But the deadline for Opportunity To Ballot petitions, which could create a write-in primary for the Green line, is July 20.

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DON’T VOTE FOR THESE JUDICIAL CANDIDATES

These candidates for judge have shown poor judgment.

Frank B. Pelosi, Democrat for City Court Judge

Loretta R. Kilpatrick, Republican for Surrogates Court Judge

Michele Pirro Bailey, Republican for Family Court Judge

These candidates for judge have shown poor judgment. They have disrespected the Green Party’s political independence and party rules.

These Democratic and Republican candidates were asked by the Green Party to not petition for the Green ballot line. But they did anyway. The Green Party doesn’t want Democrats and Republicans on the ballot as “Green” candidates.

Under the state Election Law – unlike candidates for legislative and executive public offices – judicial candidates are not required to get authorization from a party they are not enrolled in to run on its ballot line. But legal is not necessarily ethical.

There are 8 party lines on New York ballots for 2015-2018, but only three political alternatives – Democratic, Republican, and Green.

7 of the party ballot lines were created by the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial tickets in 2014 by receiving at least 50,000 votes on those ballot lines. The Democratic ticket also created the Independence, Working Families, and Women’s Equality ballot lines. The Republican ticket also created Conservative and Reform ballot lines.

The Green Party ballot line was created by the 2014 Gubernatorial Green ticket for Green candidates, not for candidates from other parties. We created the Green Party as an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans, not as just another ballot line like the little satellite parties, which routinely endorse the major parties’ candidates.

We also want to note that two City Court Judge candidates, Democrats Vanessa E. Bogan and James H. Cecile, respected the Green Party’s political independence. Judge Bogan asked the Green Party before petitioning and respected our request not to. Judge Cecile knew about our policy of political independence and respected it without having to ask.

We thank these judges for demonstrating good judgement.

We ask voters to take these considerations into account when they vote.

Mix with the 2017 Syracuse Green Party Candidates - Frank Cetera for citywide At-Large Councilor, Serena "Rahzie" Seals for 4th District Councilor, Eric Graf for 2nd District Councilor, Howie Hawkins for Mayor. Featuring "mix-tape" music, mixed drinks, a mix of different party dips with veggies and breads for dunking, and garden tours. $30 suggested donation. No one turned away. Candidates will address the attendees as a group at 7:00 pm.

Frank Cetera will declare his candidacy for 2017 Councilor At-Large on Monday, May 8 at 12:15 PM on the front steps of Syracuse City Hall.

Cetera will outline his plan for A SYRACUSE THAT WORKS - jobs for its people and a city government that gets things done.

"The goal of city government must be to end poverty and create opportunities for all families to have a dignified life – with living wage jobs, fully funded schools and a responsive city government."

Frank Cetera is 44 years old and lives with his wife Ursula Rozum on Otisco St in the Near Westside neighborhood of Syracuse. He has worked as a NYS Certified Business Advisor with the Onondaga Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College since 2009, providing business development planning and analysis to small and medium sized enterprises. During that time, Cetera has accounted for the creation of 294 jobs, and the economic investment of $3,730,000 into the small business engine of our communities. In service to his fellow workers, he also serves as Professional Administrators' At-Large Union Steward for NYSUT Local 1845 OCC Federation of Teachers and Administrators, as well as Delegate to the Greater Syracuse Labor Council.

Cetera's additional experience includes the role of Board President of Cooperative Federal Credit Union since 2010, a Community Development Credit Union that manages $22 million in assets and that serves those in Syracuse neighborhoods that are underserved by traditional banking entities. Cetera has also helped lead the recent rebirth of the Tomorrows Neighborhoods Today community planning sectors as citywide Vice-Chair, and Chair of the strategic planning committee; as well as initiated and implemented numerous grassroots projects such as the 610 Gifford St Community Garden, the Near Westside's Adopt-A-Trashcan program, and the NY Cooperative Business Network.

Cetera received 21% of the vote for 2nd District Councilor in a 3-way race with an incumbent Democrat and a Republican challenger in 2015. Cetera also has experience working on Green Party campaigns dating back to 2010 as a canvassing volunteer, finance advisor, volunteer coordinator, website and social media manager, and office manager. Cetera was also a local organizer for the Hawkins for Governor campaigns in 2010 and 2014, where he helped the Green Party secure a ballot line for the next four years as they received over 50,000 votes in 2010, and 184,419 (5% of the vote) in 2014, enough to leap over the Independence and Working Families parties to take the fourth line on New York ballots.

"Many of my supporters have urged me to run At-Large due to my diverse experience with all quadrants of the city, having lived and worked everywhere from the North Salina St corridor and Hawley-Green, to the Westcott neighborhood, to the Brighton & South Salina St corridor, and the Near Westside. Having moved to Syracuse in 2006 for graduate school and stayed for the community, I truly feel like I am a citizen of the city as a whole, and among my current challengers I can best represent every residents' interests ."

The Green Party of Onondaga County is focusing its efforts this election season on Get Out The Vote outreach for Presidential candidate Jill Stein (with VP running mate Ajamu Baraka), and United State Senator candidate Robin Laverne Wilson.

Many of you give every election season to support local candidates, and some of that money goes towards supporting our County office, supplies, and volunteer support infrastructure. With no local candidates on the ballot this year, you won't be getting any phone calls asking directly for money from them. So we are reaching out as a County Committee to ask instead.

We already have scheduled events that have taken place such as:

> Our outreach at the Great New York State Fair> Parading and tabling at the Westcott Street Cultural Fair> Weekly phone-banking> Open The Debates Rally in front of Clinton's Syracuse Campaign Headquarters> Standouts on the corner of West Genesee and West Fayette streets with signs

As well as upcoming outreach including:> Door-Knocking in October > Phone-banking and standouts continuing through Election Day> Read more from our recent organizing meeting.

Help us make this year another great Green turnout at the ballots, and keep the pressure on the 2-party system by helping us show up as the independent third party alternative here in New York!

"A peaceful protest of the exclusion of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein from Monday night's presidential debate will take place at 5:00 p.m., Monday, September 26 outside Hillary Clinton's local campaign headquarters at 716 E. Washington St. in Syracuse.

76 percent of voters want Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson in the presidential debates, according to an August 24-29 USA Today/Suffolk University poll of 1000 likely voters.

Monday night's debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump is hosted by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which is a private corporation controlled by Democratic and Republican leaders.

The protesters say the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) is designed to exclude legitimate third party candidates.

Among the protest speakers will be Howie Hawkins, the Green candidate who ran against Hillary Clinton for U.S. Senate in 2006 and was excluded from the only debate in that election hosted by WABC and The Daily News. The League of Women Voters withdrew their sponsorship of that debate over the exclusion of Hawkins.

The League of Women Voters, which had hosted the presidential debates in 1976, 1980, and 1988, withdrew its sponsorship of presidential debates in 1988. The George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns had negotiated a "memorandum of understanding" in 1988 to set the terms of presidential debates, including which candidates could participate and who could moderate and ask questions.

A League of Women Voters statement at the time said "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter." All major party presidential debates since 1988 have been hosted by the CPD.

The protesters say that any candidate qualified on enough ballots to win enough electoral votes to win the presidency should be included in debates. Four candidates meet this criteria in 2016: Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump, Libertarian Gary Johnson, and Green Jill Stein.

Well over 90 percent of voters will have the opportunity to vote for Stein, who will be on 45 state ballots (including Washington, D.C.) and is a qualified write-in candidate in three additional states."

Monday August 29 - We had a great turnout of about 15 people, and thank you to everyone who came. For those of you who could not make it, here is a quick summary of the meeting. Howie Hawkins gave a great talk on his experience at the DNC, and GNC (Green National Convention), and what the future looks like for the Stein campaign. It seems that she drew a lot of support from Berners who were thrown under the bus by Bernie, and the Democratic Party. After Bernie backed Hillary and her nomination, Jill Stein saw one million dollars flow into her campaign overnight from donors. Stein's speeches were great, and well attended. Howie says that he thinks she is getting better at unscheduled talks or "stump" speeches. He said the GNC was fantastic with great media coverage, and the feeling at the whole convention was positive, and vibrant.

We went over volunteering opportunities for the month of September, and some fun events coming up.

For the month of September, we will be holding phone bank parties on Tuesday and Thursday at the Green Party Office on E. Genesee St, or someone’s house in the city. You can also phone bank from home on a day that works for you, and if you are interested in that please contact me.

We will also be doing standouts every Friday. After Standouts we will then head to a local coffee shop, or bar to catch up with each other. To see how everyone has been doing with outreach, and their feeling so far of the responses they have been receiving. What does the political climate look like in our area? Does Jill have a lot of support? Also we can brainstorm on upcoming events for the area.

The Stein campaign also needs our help with a million calls for Jill. It is a phone banking initiative whose purpose is to contact, and recruit more phone banking volunteers to spread Jill’s message. I will be contacting everyone through email to let them know more about this.

We will be doing door knocking one Sunday in September, and we will ramp up door knocking for October.

Two fun events we have coming up in the Syracuse area are; Labor Day outreach at the fair, and The Westcott Cultural Fair. Labor Day outreach will take place on Labor Day 9/5/16 by the main entrance of the fair. We will meet up at 9:00am by the main entrance. There will be literature, and signup sheets handed out to volunteers. We will canvass the people who are entering the fair from 9:15am to 12noon. We will have two point people to contact if you run into any trouble.. It is dollar day so admission is only a dollar! This is usually the busiest day of the fair so we really can reach a lot of people, and spread Jill’s message, and campaign. The Westcott Cultural Fair is also another fun event coming up in the area. It goes from 11:30am till 6pm. We will be marching in the parade so we want people to meet at the Westcott Community Center at 11:30am withy our green on! This is where the parade will start. We are looking for 100 people to march so spread the word! We also will have a booth, and will need people to fill shifts throughout the day. The shifts we need to cover are; booth set up, booth take down, people to staff the booth through the day, and people to hand out literature and engage passersby.

If any of these volunteer opportunities peak your interest please get in touch with me. Jill has a chance to win this. In order to do so we need people like you to get involved in the revolution. We have some great contacts now in Weedsport, and the Utica area. We are looking forward to working more with our new volunteers, and hopefully get them set up to get volunteering started in their towns.

As a political party we work to establish political action based on cooperation, rather than exploitation, on conservation rather than consumption, and on sustainability rather than short-term gain. We believe in an alternative, independent politics.